Negative-Side-Effects

JUST A LITTLE IS JUST TOO MUCH! - I’ve been doing really good not to consume alcohol these past few months, I’m trying to keep my diet as clean as possible to get the result’s I’m craving…However last weekend I had two glasses of wine and all was history.It’s amazing how much alcohol can affect your body when you don’t consume it as often (every weekend). I had a splitting headache and just weakness running all over my body. I won’t do it again until maybe my vacation to Jamaica at the end of the month….. -__-

I love scary movies. I can’t help but devour anything spooky and macabre, inevitably finding myself plagued by fearful images as soon as darkness falls or I find myself alone. The negative side effects do little to discourage me from watching these movies. Why weirdos like me find such enjoyment in horror is a question frequently posed in cultural discussions, and there are a great many theories. However, I find the question of why certain things frighten us just as interesting. There are few things more satisfying to experience in cinema than a good scare. When it’s done right, it almost seems like a magic trick, and like magic tricks themselves, the success of a horror movie relies on the tendencies of the human brain to react predictably to certain stimuli.

Anyone who has a passing familiarity with the genre will recognize certain elements that are used consistently in horror movies to scare their audiences. So what is about these things that are so good at scaring us? The emotional experience of fear is built into our genetic history, from the early days when we were at the not-so-top of the food chain. Fear is a signal to our primal brains that our lives are somehow in danger. We fear the dark because our vision is compromised when night falls, leaving us more vulnerable to attack. We fear snakes and spiders because we know that some of them carry deadly venom in those creepy little bodies. We can look to Darwin for an explanation of why these fears are so universal, even in modern American society, where we are arguably safer than we’ve ever been. The ancient humans who didn’t experience fear of the dark wandered too far from the campfire and were eaten by predators, never getting a chance to pass on their lack of common sense to future generations. The fear instinct allowed our ancestors to survive, and so it has been passed on to us, thousands of years later. Evolution favors the scared.

There is an entire branch of psychology related to these kinds of theories, called evolutionary psychology: an attempt to explain human psychological traits as useful adaptations that have survived through natural selection. Much of what frightens us in horror movies can be linked with evolutionary theories. A recent article/podcast in Slate gave fascinating insight into the elements of musical scores in horror movies that are linked to our ancient survival impulses, therefore elevating our emotional experience. According to the author, there are two fundamentals to scary music: screeching, erratic tones, and low, grumbling ones. The first type of noise is reminiscent of screaming, or an animal in distress. The most obvious and perfect example of this is, of course, the music that accompanies the shower scene in Psycho. In my opinion, however, there is none more creepy than the music in Kubrick movies, in particular The Shining (vocals kick in around the 1:40 mark) and 2001: A Space Odyssey. In these scores, we have actual vocalizations, not just instruments imitating them. The worst part is the crescendo they keep building towards, as if you are drawing closer and closer to the source of the noises, when all you want to do is run away.

In contrast, low, rumbling tones scare us because the body mass of an animal directly determines the lowest frequency they can vocalize. Therefore, when we hear a low frequency, we think: there is something large nearby that is coming to get me. Again, there is a gold standard, obvious example for this: John Williams’ unforgettable theme to Jaws, the baritone piano keys leading the suspenseful orchestral build-up; the very audible embodiment of a shark’s primal predatory instinct. The soundtrack to the movie Donnie Darko, which makes use of encroaching, pulse-like low frequencies, also comes to mind as a great example of this kind of dread-invoking music.

Continuing in the evolutionary/lizard brain vein, another aspect of horror psychology that has always fascinated me is the fear of the unusual, especially when it comes to the appearance of human beings. We dislike seeing anything that looks pretty much like a human being, but something is slightly…off. Take the image of Samara, the girl from The Ring, emerging from a well. Yes, it’s a human being, but the thick black sheet of dirty hair that hides her face is absolutely terrifying, not to mention that she just generally looks like she’s decaying. Or Michael Myers, the serial killer of the Halloween movies, in his rubber mask. The appearance of this character is so effectively creepy, I think, because the mask is meant to look like an actual human face (it was originally a William Shatner mask), but the uncanniness is accentuated by the fact that was spray-painted white, and no eyes are visible underneath: just two black sockets staring you down right before the stabbing begins.

Interestingly, a great deal of classic movie ghouls fit the typecast of the Slightly Off Humanoid (SOHs, I call them): vampires, Frankenstein’s monster, zombies and mummies all fit the bill. So, what’s going on here? We’ve gotten this far in our evolutionary development in no small part to our use of stereotypes, which historically have helped us to make snap judgments that could spell the difference between life and death. To an early human, a person who looks strange or is acting strange is most likely sick, meaning they could infect you, or wounded, meaning a predator could be nearby to get you next. Your instinct is to get away as fast as possible. That may be why the slow, jerking gait of a zombie is frightening- that could be a neurological disease at work. And technically all of the above scary things are (un)dead -so fear of death is pretty obviously at play here.

Interestingly, I think that the fear that we experience in seeing something that looks diseased is distinctly different than the fear upon seeing something big, monstrous, and lethal. Big monsters trigger a fight-or-flight type stress response that comes to its highest point as the monster is being hinted at, before it is actually revealed- think of the stomping sounds/ripple in the water before the T. Rex appears in Jurassic Park, or the gigantic fin cutting through the water in Jaws (Spielberg gets it right, every time). You know there is something big and scary coming for you, but there is still time to get away. The result is that your sympathetic nervous system goes into overdrive and adrenaline races through your body. This may be why monster movies are generally considered a lot more fun than other types of horror- this is why you see King Kong, Jaws, and T. Rex in your Universal Studios rides, and not The Thing or Nosferatu. These type of diseased creatures of horror prey upon our emotions in a much subtler way, evoking the existential dread of unseen, unstoppable forces which we do not understand and therefore cannot outwit. And then we have slasher films, which it could be argued bridge the gap between these two categories. The classic movie serial killer is a huge, muscular man with extreme, sometimes supernatural strength- and he is almost always masked, lending the element of the unusual, unnerving physical appearance. Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, the Scream ghost, and Leatherface all qualify here. Not being able to see someones face automatically means something is wrong, probably because human beings get most of their information about someone’s intentions by way of facial cues. All of this boils down to one simple point- we are terrified of the unknown.

Of course, biology and evolution can’t explain everything about why horror movies affect us in such profound ways- there’s also things like storytelling and artistic vision to consider. But it is interesting to consider how movies that seem so abstractly terrifying can all be linked, in some way, to the ancient past, when humankind was in it’s infancy and our safety was never a guarantee.

Over the last few days the brown/pink discharge has gradually become much less colourful and is more the colour of normal discharge now.. thicker than my usual discharge, but i’m feeling much more confident to see my guy now!

So I began taking the mini pill 12 days ago, and today I have brown discharge. In the morning it was pale brown. As the day as progressed, it had become more of a dryer, dark brown discharge. Very similar to what I experienced months into having the depo injection!

F***! I’m hoping that maybe the fact that this has happened so soon, means maybe it will disappear sooner too.. but who knows. I’ll keep you updated!

ive seen other people mention this, but “girls/women,” “people with vaginas,” and “people who menstruate” are not synonyms. like i think a lot of people know by now that there are a lot of trans people who have vaginas but do not identify as girls or women, so it’s best to use gender-neutral language if you need to refer to people who have a specific set of equipment.

but it’s also important to keep in mind that not all people who have vaginas menstruate. in fact i feel like a fairly large percentage of vagina-havers do not. reasons someone might have a vagina but not menstruate include:

they are intersex

they were born with a different genital set-up and had surgery later

they have not yet hit puberty

they have hit menopause

they have a hormone imbalance that prevents them from menstruating

they are taking hormones which prevent them from menstruating, either as an intended effect or a negative side-effect

they have an illness or genetic condition which affects their reproductive organs

they have had their reproductive organs removed, either by choice or by necessity

they are struggling with an eating disorder or for other reasons unable to eat adequately

other things not listed

a lot of these things are highly personal or even traumatizing, and making posts that imply everyone with a vagina does or should menstruate only rubs it in. please be careful with your language.

I have a question for you! What do you think would happen if a Superhuman Normal and a Twilight had a child? Like how do you think the child would turn out and what complications would there be?

Ohoho, this is a fantastic question! As the manga states, Twilights and Superhuman Normals are both descendants from Celebre users in the past. The reason the two are different is that Twilights’ ancestors couldn’t negate the negative side effects, while the ancestors of Superhuman Normals could and then had no negative side effects.

If we think about how the children of Twilights and regular Normals become Twilights, it would make sense to assume that whatever genes decide that a child will become a Twilight are dominant over regular Normal genes.

Superhuman Normal genes appear to work the same way, so I think that there are many ways that this could go! Should a Twilight and a Superhuman Normal have a child, I think it would be fair to assume that the child will either be a Superhuman Normal or a Twilight, with the possibility of a lessened risk for the Twilight children offered.

I would actually venture to say that the genes of a Superhuman Normal and that of a Twilight would show something called incomplete dominance—where neither completely cancel out the other, but rather offer a mixture of the two.

I propose that the child of a Superhuman Normal and a Twilight would have a longer lifespan, perhaps even closer that of a Normal than one would expect. The heightened abilities would stay, that I’m sure of, but the compensation the child would have to pay would be lessened somewhat. Children might actually be ranked by how severe or mild their compensation is similarly to how Twilights are ranked for their strength!

I might be getting a bit carried away, but I really love this question and should you wish for me to continue it or offer any other questions like this, please send something in!

Building on previous work, researchers at Duke University have developed a new technology that wraps nanoshells in a thin film of drug-infused hydrogel, adding additional firepower to the already promising targeted cancer treatment. The hydrogel is loaded with cancer-fighting drugs and coated onto the nanoshells, which heat up when exposed to infrared light and release the chemotherapeutic drugs, delivering a one-two punch, directly to the tumour.

In 2013, Duke researchers discovered that soft-tissue tumors could be destroyed by injecting gold-covered nanoshells at the site of the tumors and heating them up by exposing them to infrared light. This photothermal treatment, which is currently undergoing clinical trials, offers a targeted approach that avoids the negative side effects associated with chemotherapy and radiation, which also destroy healthy cells, leaving surrounding flesh damaged and the immune system decimated.

The nanoshells measure around 100 nanometers wide and are tuned to absorb infrared light and quickly heat up when exposed to it, destroying the cancer cells. This is possible because the 800 nm wavelength infrared light passes harmlessly through water and tissue, allowing doctors to apply it directly to the patient’s tumour. Additionally, due to the leaky vasculature found in tumors, the nanoshells tend to accumulate there.

I kind of want to start practicing withcraft but im worried that maybe ill do something wrong? Should j be worried about maybe putting myself in danger i guess?

You should definitely be careful when working with magic because it can have undesired results (see: My First Spell for an example), but in my opinion, magic isn’t really as ‘dangerous’ as some people may lead you to believe. Working with herbs and crystals can be a little tricky, but only because some are toxic when ingested, and if you’re collecting herbs yourself, you might mistake a harmless plant for one that can give you negative side effects like vomiting, nose bleed, etc.

If you want a more detailed opinion on the dangers of witchcraft, I have this short article that goes more in depth :)

I often jump when people touch me (especially if I didn't see them coming - might even lash out then), and also at sudden movements, trying to defend myself. The thing is I wasn't physically abused. I mean, I've been slapped, shoved, & held down by my parents, but those were very isolated incidents, 2-3 times i believe. so why am i so paranoid over just that? is this normal??

Any kind of abuse, and any number of incidents, can lead to someone having an exaggerated startle response.

Those incidents may seem small to you, relatively inconsequential, but they’re not, and that’s your abuse lying to you. Abuse victims/survivors have a tendency to downplay what happened to them, and that’s a coping mechanism. But it often has negative side effects, and feeling like you’re overreacting is one of them.

I think, if I could only say one thing to abuse victims/survivors, it would be that, no matter what you are feeling or dealing with in response to what you went through, it’s normal and other people have dealt with it before. It’s okay to react this way to being touched, and it’s something a lot of people are coping with.

oh omg im sorry i honestly never saw you posting anything about it lol may i ask why you complain about them? i'm very insecure about my chest and i know absolutly nothing about hormones

I only complain about them bc they give me horrible mood swings but most of all bc i have to inject them bc that’s the most effective form for me. You shouldn’t consider hormones if you’re self conscious about your chest tho. Hormones are serious and you could have negative side effects. If anything I’d ask my doctor for more info on this

Honestly, that depends on what side effects you personally consider “negative”. Most people experience quite a bit of acne during the first months on testosterone. Sometimes it’s severe, but it usually depends on the severity of any acne you may have experienced during the first go around of puberty. Taking either hormone to transition essentially takes you through a second puberty. Remember all the terrible things that happened to you physically in your early teens? Be prepared for that again. Fortunately, it doesn’t last forever. Acne, mood swings, hunger, and an awkward voice are to be expected during the first few months. After that, hormone levels even out eventually. I’ve heard of some guys who found out that they were allergic to some of the oils that T is suspended in as well. Some may suggest an allergy test before starting T if you do have a lot of allergies to certain things (cottonseed oil or sesame oil).
Testosterone will also put you at risk for all of the health complications that cis men have to worry about. High cholesterol, heart disease, hair loss, etc.
I was also informed that T can cause increased red blood cell mass in some people. As long as you regularly see a doctor, stick to your dosage, and stay healthy, these things can be prevented/treated.

Sarah is so paranoid: Don't trust the government! Don't trust your doctors! Don't trust the pharma companies! What a horrible way to live. Of course pharma companies have to profit, but profit won't exist if patients are experiencing massive negative side effects of the drug that is being sold. She is so young and so wrapped up in this "trust no bitch" attitude. I am really surprised her work has not fired her with such an attitude, to be honest. I am sure she doesn't trust the doctors there!

Meanwhile, she expects everyone to place their trust in an unevidenced, unproven, untested "recovery method" which is unrecognised amongst medical professionals as a viable treatment for eating disorders on the basis that she approves of it, and genuinely seems confused when people ask for further proof of its validity than just her word!

I imagine that Sarah’s mistrust of literally everything and everyone lies in her own inability to be truthful and honest. I can’t imagine it is easy for a deceitful individual to trust others, for obvious reasons. She trusts no bitch, because she knows damn well that bitches should know better than to trust her. As for Sarah’s job, I think it is her ability to be deceitful that allows her to remain in her position - she has already clarified that the ED residential home where she works does not advocate MM as a recovery method, thus she is working to support people in their recoveries despite not even believing that it is possible for them to reach a point of recovery following any method other than MM - the only “real” form of recovery. Sarah has made her mistrust of medical professionals abundantly clear, and I have no doubt that she would still be warning people off visiting their doctor and/or following medical advice were it not for her dangerous behaviour being called out constantly by both anti MM bloggers, and people horrified at her irresponsible actions. Sarah believes that doctors in general are heavily influenced by diet culture, thus I cannot imagine that she places any trust in the doctors she encounters at work - but she’s good enough at lying to deceive the other staff into believing otherwise, hence her position is not likely to be threatened by her attitude. She just has to keep up her two-faced, hypocritical pretence. Seriously though, can you imagine if one of the patients Sarah works with stumbles across EED - pretty likely to happen at some point if any of them frequent the eating disorder recovery community on tumblr - and are faced with her true opinions of all other recovery methods that are not MM? Talk about invalidating their progress!